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1.2.7-Kingedmundsroyalmurder
Brick club chapter 7: of hatred, despair, and contraditions So yeah, I’ve lost track of the days after falling behind. And I wasn’t going to go fill in the chapters I missed so as to catch up, but I can’t not talk about this chapter. It is the best chapter and it has produced some awesome discussion. I’m sorry that my contribution to that is coming so late in the game. "C’était, nous l’avons dit, un ignorant; mais ce n’était pas un imbécile." (He was, as we have said, ignorant, but he was not an idiot.) So Hugo starts off with what is essentially the thesis statement of this chapter. Jean Valjean is uneducated but he’s not stupid, even if he is unused to thinking critically and deeply about things. I love how his first mental action is to consider justice. It’s got to be something that weighs heavily on his mind given his surroundings and he’s probably recently convicted enough that he remembers the judicial process clearly. He is, as has been noted, strikingly self-aware and capable of clear step by step logic. This bit though? This bit made me so sad: “l’homme est ainsi fait qu’il peut souffrir longtemps et beaucoup, moralement et physiquement, sans mourir” (man is thus made so that he can suffer a lot and for a long time, morally and physically, without dying). I know that he doesn’t just accept his fate, but the fact that he has come to the conclusion that life is pain makes me sad. His analysis of the justice system comes next, and he works through his reasoning and condemns the system as well as himself. He really is doing his best to serve as the impartial arbiter of justice here and I think he does a pretty good job. He comes to the same conclusion that most of us have, i.e. he did do something wrong and it was right to punish him for it but the punishment assigned was harsh and disproportionate to the crime. And then we get this: “Il la condamna sans haine.” (He condemned society without hatred.” I don’t get this sentence. It makes sense as a sentence, but Hugo is about to spend basically the rest of the chapter talking about how much Jean Valjean does hate everything. Is he saying that that hatred did not enter into Valjean’s inner judicial process? Is he saying that that hatred came later? Is he just internally inconsistent? I don’t get it. (I also think that so far at least, Valjean’s hatred is more an informed attribute than anything else. Yes, we get more animal metaphors later and it’s true that he could respond well to kindness (though there’s foreshadowing for his robbing the Bishop too) but that doesn’t explain his attitude towards the people of Digne. I know others talked about this, but it just doesn’t add up properly.) The next step in Valjean’s logic is actually a pretty obvious one, when you’re dealing with cause and effect stuff. He’s identified society as the cause of injustice and condemned it, so the next step is to look for the cause of society and condemn that too. The narrative is not pleased about this, but frankly I can’t really blame him. He’d never received anything but suffering from the world, after all, so why shouldn’t he condemn its maker? "Ainsi, pendant ces dix-neuf ans de torture et d’esclavage, cette âme monta et tomba en même temps. Il y entra de la lumière d’un côté et des ténèbres de l’autre." (Thus, during these nineteen years of hatred and slavery, this soul rose and fell at the same time. He entered into the light on one end and the shadows on the other.) So I assume here the light is education and the shadows are hatred? Am I reading that correctly? Then we get Hugo’s musings on the inherent goodness of man, otherwise known as the section where I had to restrain myself from highlighting everything. I’m not entirely sure if Hugo is saying here that all men are created good or that only some men are and he’s only going to be talking about those. I think it’s the second, but I’m not sure. Either way it’s an interesting discussion. I am 100% in Camp Misanthropy most of the time, so I absolutely think that it’s possible for a once good person to be rendered wicked by the evils of man and society. (I also think that it’s possible for a once wicked person to be rendered good. I am all for multiple selves and broken continuity and forging one’s own identity at any age.) Hugo seems to land on the side of “almost but not quite” what with his talk about immortal, incorruptible sparks of goodness inside every man. He does point out that physiologists would argue otherwise upon seeing Valjean sitting and thinking angrily, but given that he’s clearly making that someone else’s opinion I don’t think Hugo agrees with it. I’m also wondering if his hypothetical physiologists wouldn’t be a bit biased against the prisoners from the start, what with their apparent inclination to deny them even hope. Anyway, philosophical digression aside, we return to Jean Valjean and get the aforementioned extended animal metaphor. Basically suffering has rendered him a slave to his instincts, a wild animal incapable of reason who acts without thought or knowledge of cause and effect. We get an explanation for his sudden viciousness with the Bishop: “Seulement, par intervalles, il lui venait tout à coup, de lui-même ou du dehors, une secousse de colère” (Only, occasionally, all of a sudden, from himself or from outside, a tremor of anger came over him). This seems to be exactly what happened with the Bishop a couple chapters back, and it also ties in with the dissociation that’s going to be talked about later. Jean Valjean, rational and logical though he might be, is not always in control of himself or his body and he is prone to acting without thinking and not knowing why. It’s why there are so many escape attempts. I love that we get an explanation for all this, even if the explanation itself is deeply upsetting. And then superpowers. Maybe he should have joined a circus upon release and become a strong man/acrobat combo. Of course then we wouldn’t have a story, but frankly Jean Valjean plus circus would be fun too. (Were there circuses in 1815 or whenever this is?) Next we get more descriptions of his intense hatred for all the things and I am still not buying it. Sorry Hugo, your character doesn’t act hateful and in no human interaction have we had the sense that he is filled with hate, and I am not going to be convinced that he is just because you tell me so. Though admittedly the millet grain analogy is pretty cool. Also cool: his description of the way Valjean dissociates and considers the guards nothing but ghosts, right up until those ghosts beat him. I don’t know why I like that line so much, but I really do. And then a final note that Valjean is indeed dangerous and that I do believe. Honestly the picture I’m getting here is of a wounded animal, not vicious by nature but rendered so by cruelty and desperation. He is dangerous, including to people who show him kindness or pity. He has absolutely no reason not to be suspicious, no reason to be grateful, no reason to do anything but survive and lash out at those he perceives as having wronged him. Commentary Pilferingapples Glad to have your commentary any time— even late is better than not at all! I completely agree that we haven’t seen Valjean treating the world with hate so much as with fear and anger, and even that, generally in response to direct unpleasant treatment. FMA translation has “light entered on one side and darkness on the other”, rather than Valjean entering light and darkness himself, but otherwise I think your assessment of it is correct? He’s taking in education, scholarship, a kind of enlightenment, but at the same time he’s taking in cruelty and outrage. The way they shape him together is part of what makes him a dangerous man by the time we meet him, I think. Education alone would have made him less likely to try and solve problems in violent (modern meaning or just sudden) ways; outrage alone would have made him less able to consider it. But he’s got both. And still, as capable of being sweet and grateful as of being dangerous, even in the same conversation! He must have been a complete sweetheart before the prison got to him. And now I’m sad again. Ugh, Hugo.